Blues boss Mick McCarthy admitted that Town’s 5-0 defeat at Crystal Palace was “a sobering experience” and that the Eagles “murdered” his team.
McCarthy said: "It’s a bit of a sobering experience but I didn’t come away from Saturday thinking it was all sweetness and light, by any stretch of the imagination.
"I think I probably said afterwards that I didn’t think that one victory was just going to turn it all around. Crystal Palace are a different proposition to Birmingham, they’re a good side at the moment.”
He says the display continued his process of learning about his squad: "They made mistakes, they gave penalties away and as usual players are telling me that it wasn’t a penalty, it wasn’t a penalty, it wasn’t a penalty.
"Players are the same. If players give penalties away, they’re always going to say it’s not a penalty. I’ll have to look at them closer, I’ll have to look at them on the replay before I’m going to say categorically that they were penalties. Of course, I’ve learnt a lot about them. It’s been a long five days I can tell you.”
McCarthy had praise for Wilfried Zaha and the Palace team as a whole: "He’s been doing it to a lot of teams. We didn’t come here with one win and 10 points and suddenly become a really top team.
"I fully understood it was going to be a little bit that way. I took them on and I thought that it was going to be a little bit that way, but I decided to take them on.
"And you know what? For a part of it I think it worked. The first goal is a mistake, the second one’s a penalty. However they came about, we’ve a fair bit of work to do.”
He says his approach isn’t going to be altered by the performance: "It’s not changed it at all. I was fully aware of it.
"If anybody thought that me coming in and getting one win at Birmingham and was suddenly expecting us to come to Crystal Palace, who are flying high and are unbeaten in 13 or 14 now, [amd get a win] were a little bit misguided in their thoughts.
"I think there will be other teams around the league that we’ll have to beat and get points off. Crystal Palace, they murdered us tonight, they were much better than us.
"They were terrific all around the pitch. Ollie’s inherited a really good side there. That just doesn’t come over night, that’s been born through recruitment and then organising a team.
"You look at them, they’re all a good size, athletic, they’ve got two really good wingers. They’re a good team, worthy of being top.”
Despite the size of the defeat, McCarthy, who says he can’t remember a team conceding three penalties in a game, let alone in 11 minutes, was reasonably pleased with how his side had begun each half: "I thought we started well and I thought we started the second half well too, bizarrely enough, but within eight or 10 minutes we were 4-0 down.
"There’s got to be a thread running through it, hasn’t there? We’ve conceded more goals than anybody else.
"You can go through the whole catalogue there in terms of how we conceded. Even at 4-0, for the last goal, we’ve got a corner kick and the bloke [Damien Delaney] that prevented us scoring to make it 4-1, who has left our place, and they score from the resulting corner.
"That’s just organisation. Whatever you do, if you’re 4-0 down, don’t get beaten by five. My five years has told me a lot, I’ve a lot more to do.”
New Palace manager Ian Holloway was delighted with his team’s display: "It was a fantastic performance from start to finish and the great thing about this lot is that they grind on.”
Holloway’s Blackpool beat the Blues 6-0 earlier in the season and he believes Town didn’t deserve to be on the end of two such heavy defeats: "I’ve got to say both scorelines flattered us.
"I have to say I thought Ipswich were terrific, the spirit they showed, the way they got about the game, they controlled the ball for quite a long period but without the end product.
"Even the shot that DJ got off, Speroni’s focus on that ball when he picked that up was absolutely sublime. I’ve got nothing to do with that yet, that was what I inherited.
"What I want to try and do is free them up and smile and sing and join in and keep going. That’s not a clown, that’s someone who wants to get people to enjoy what they do, and I don’t care about the score. I want to enjoy their performance and I did tonight, and that’s all I can say really.”
Asked whether Ipswich had approached Blackpool before Mick McCarthy took over or he had spoken to the Blues, he said: "No, all it was was speculation.
"The truth is that [Palace chairman] Steve Parish rang [Blackpool] chairman Karl Oyston and Karl spoke to me like I knew he would and I said, for the first time ever, ‘I want to speak to someone else’.”